Consider These Tips to Improve Your Voice Search Rankings

Key Takeaways

​As its use continues to grow, brands need to have a strategy in place that focuses on optimizing for voice search.

Page Content

​This article was originally published in Rise Interactive's blog. Rise
Interactive is a digital marketing agency specializing in media,
analytics, and customer experience.

If you find yourself prefacing
questions with “OK Google,” or asking Siri or Alexa for answers, you’re
participating in the growing use of voice search. In the fast-changing
world of search marketing, the ability to be found in search results
activated via voice is becoming an important part of a comprehensive
search strategy. According to a 2014 Northstar Research study
commissioned by Google, 41% of U.S. adults and 55% of teens use voice
search -- and these numbers have only grown.

What It Is

Voice search uses speech recognition technology to enable searchers
to make voice command search queries. As a result, search engines will
return a direct answer and show a list of results. The search engine
works by matching the question to the most relevant answer while
considering searcher history and behavior. These voice-based search
queries use a combination of technologies to provide results: natural
language processing (NLP), text to speech (TTS), and pre-programmed
language voice search tools including Google’s voice command app,
Apple’s Siri, Window’s Cortana, and Amazon’s Alexa.

Key Considerations

As its use continues to grow, brands need to have a strategy in place
that focuses on optimizing for voice search. Here are a few unique
areas to consider as you incorporate voice search into your overall
search marketing strategy:

When determining target keywords and content, keep in mind the conversational nature of voice searches.

Develop questions that searchers may ask and make sure you have
content that answers those questions. This could include adding Q&A
content to your site.

Consider the customized experience of voice search. Google is
becoming extremely personalized with its voice-activated apps, such as
giving specific traffic information at the time of an individual
searcher’s commute and customizing data and reminders.

Implement structured data markup including rich snippets, breadcrumbs, and Sitelinks search box. Google will pull from the structured data markup and display it in the Knowledge Graph depending on whether the site is authoritative for the search query.

Measuring Voice Search’s Impact

Voice search is highly personalized, which can make it difficult to
measure your strategy’s effectiveness. Keyword ranking tools such as
Linkdex can provide a start to understanding mobile data, however
there’s still much more to be learned about long-tail mobile search
rankings. For mobile (m.) sites, Google Search Console’s “search
analytics” feature allows you to filter for queries to measure click
behavior between associated keywords and phrases. While neither of these
are a comprehensive solution, it’s likely that more accurate
measurement tools are on the horizon.

The Future of Voice Search

As the capabilities and value of voice continue to grow, there are a
few anticipated changes that should influence your voice search
strategy. First, the conversational tone of voice search will continue
to evolve. This means marketers will need to place increased emphasis on
sentences, phrases, and topics rather than keywords (semantic search).

Additionally, there will be a greater need to optimize for long-tail
keywords. Tagging will play a large role in success and marketers will
need to optimize images and videos. It should also be noted that rather
than taking users to a specific page, data and stats will be read back
to the user and/or immediately displayed on the user’s device, rather
than taking them directly to a site.

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